Night Angels(95)

“Where would you like to go, Grace?”

“Is it up to me?”

He smiled wryly. Since when did she speak to him in that tone? “Your decision. Wherever you decide to go, we’ll go. We’ll start a new life.”

But where else could he start his career, if not in China?

Her eyes flickered. “I’d love to go home.”

He couldn’t blame her; if China was a compass in his heart, then America was hers. He should take her home; he owed her that, after years of relocating for his career. Now that his career had ended, it was her turn to choose where they’d live. The United States was reachable with his diplomatic status, though that would expire soon. “We’ll go to the US.”

The next morning, he purchased three boat tickets to the US with a departure date of May 10. They would embark on a liner from the Italian seaport of Trieste and sail to New York. He also sent a telegram to a friend in China, Mr. Wang Pengsheng, the director of the Institute of International Relations of the National Military Commission, indicating his travel to the US—his friends, he was certain, had heard of his discharge by now.



Two days before their departure, he received a telegram from his friend, Mr. Wang, asking him to write reports about President Roosevelt when he arrived there. A minor assignment, with a paltry compensation, nothing like an official post with salary and dignity. Fengshan gladly took it. This would keep him occupied while Grace recuperated.

The day of his departure arrived. On the radio, a British announcer said in a sober voice that Prime Minister Chamberlain had been replaced by Winston Churchill, a pugnacious politician. The tide of the war, it seemed, had taken another turn.

Fengshan turned off the radio and went downstairs to pay the hotel fees, and then the three of them, Grace, Monto, and himself, took a taxi to the train station.

In the car, he turned to the window. Outside, the grand art deco buildings, the Baroque apartments, the stately monuments, the cathedrals, the theaters, the coffeehouses, the palaces, and the parks passed by, all looking so real yet like a dream. For three years, he had lived in Vienna. He was familiar with the buildings, had studied their architecture and their history, and admired them. He loved Vienna, but he loved its people the most, their refined manners, their keen interest in culture, their delightful conversations, and their heart-throbbing music. With the Viennese, he had drunk coffee at coffeehouses, danced the waltz in chambers, and attended balls in palaces. Sadly, the era of Austria that he had admired was the past, and the people he had conversed with were either dead or gone, Mr. Rosenburg, Captain Heine, Miss Schnitzler, whom he barely knew, and other fine men, audacious women, the very people a country should feel pride in.

For them and many people who had been born here, grown up with its language, its culture, its customs, and its history, this city had been a cruel execution ground, a quagmire of death; they had been persecuted by a country they called home, had loved a country that denounced them, and had been driven to death by the people they called countrymen. Their faces, their names, and their struggles would fade into the unknown. The grand buildings, their former residences, now the homes of the persecutors, would not bear a trace of their blood or tears.

What was a country without its people?

It would merely be a landmark on a map without a heart and a soul.

How many visas had he issued? How many people found new lives with those visas? He would never know. His only regret was that he could no longer help them.

The Vienna train station appeared in the twilight, the brass signs, the poles with gaslights, and the platform full of people holding suitcases. He couldn’t help thinking that when he had stepped out of the station three years ago, greeted by the grand buildings on the Ringstrasse, the teeming cars, and the well-dressed pedestrians, his chest had swelled with optimism and confidence—this city would be the springboard for his diplomatic career. But he had been mistaken. Vienna was a trap for the honorable men and women in this city; it was a trap for him too. He had arrived at Vienna as a rising diplomat with a promising career, and now he was leaving Vienna as a disgraced official. Like the very people he had tried to protect, he was driven out, jobless, and denounced by his own country.





CHAPTER 67


GRACE


Finally, the train began to move, the floor quivering. I held on to the table’s edge and looked out the window. When I had first arrived in Vienna, I had been fearful and lonely; now, looking at the shadowy platform in the night’s darkness, the desultory figures of the passengers, and the solemn-faced men in uniforms, I still felt lonely but no longer fearful.

I had seen off Eva at this exact spot in the winter of 1938, and now Eva was out of my reach. Poor Lola never made it to this platform, but she would still be with me. Her words, at least. She was part of my Dickinson book now, safely tucked in the bottom of my suitcase, and she would be with me wherever I went.

On the train, Fengshan was deep in his thoughts. He would talk to me when he felt like it—his style, which I had grown accustomed to. And when he did decide to talk to me, I wondered if he would lash out at me. For my refusal to stop my friend. For my ineptitude. I would have welcomed it, but knowing him, there would be only silence, disappointment, bubbling and distant.

But who wouldn’t say that the disappointment wasn’t mutual?

We arrived in Trieste in the early morning and embarked on the ship, Saturnia, in the late afternoon. On the distant horizon, the Mediterranean sun shed brilliant strands of gold, the air fresh with the scent of the sea, and the water a pristine shade of blue. Had Lola been able to leave for Shanghai, she would have seen this sight.